Quick Tips - Dragon's Maze Prerelease

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KrazyCaley

28 April 2013

2670 views

Hi, all. A few lessons from the Dragon's Maze prerelease. I played in a 2HG format today with my good buddies csmash, miinor_threat, Ashkaan, and JimmyDuvet. My partner was csmash; he took Boros and got Rakdos as an ally, and I took Dimir and got Azorius as an ally.

csmash's build was a well-built all-around beatdown deck that started early and finished strong with Aurelia and Rakdos. My deck was almost entirely removal and counterspells (are we surprised?) with Teysa and Debt to the Deathless as finishers. We went 3-1, losing our last match to the 1st place finishers, and finished in 2nd.


Lessons:

  • There is not much removal in this format. Use all that you can, and strongly consider picking something with black in it; black has all the really good removal. I made extensive use of Warped Physique and Far//Away.

  • In 2HG, Debt to the Deathless is a win condition. You draw it, you cast it, and if it resolves late in the game, you win. I feared that the 2HG tourney would have a ton of copies of it, so I ran lots of counterspells. I did not regret it. My own copy of Debt essentially won two of the matches.

  • Evasion, as ever, is key. There is an unusually high amount of evasion in this format, and you ignore the need for reach/flying at your peril. There are already enough unblockable creatures around; keep the skies clean.

  • Selesnya is surprisingly strong, much more so than I thought it would be. Populating can indeed be a viable strategy, especially when backed up with board-protectors like Frontline Medic and combined with whole-board pumpers like Gruul War Chant.

  • The abundance of cluestones and guildgates means three-color decks are common and usually a good idea, but it also means the format is slow. Plan accordingly.

  • Debt to the Deathless aside, the bombs in this set are not particularly game-ending or awful relative to other sets. Your deck needs to be good front to back on the mana curve and wage a whole-duel war rather than excel in just one phase of the game.

Ohthenoises says... #1

Debt to the Deathless in single player matches won me 5 of my 8 game wins. I only had a 1x in the deck.... The other 3 wins were off the back of the new Armadillo Cloak on Armored Wolf-Rider .

Junk colors in general are strong and my guild rare for golgari was Jarad's Orders which pulls it's weight REALLY well if you have any scavenge guys.

April 28, 2013 1:16 a.m.

Ohthenoises says... #2

Also, Gaze of Granite is busted as hell.

April 28, 2013 1:17 a.m.

Emrakool says... #3

As far as I'm concerned Gaze of Granite is the closest thing to an effective reprint of Pernicious Deed . Slightly more expensive, but kills planeswalkers as well.

April 28, 2013 2:11 a.m.

10vernothin says... #4

oh yeah, remember, tokens have 0 CMC.

Gaze of Granite can boardwipe a whole board of tokens with 3 mana.

April 28, 2013 3:07 a.m.

vic says... #5

Is this a whole new format or something? I don't understand the "allies" usage here. One guild is allies with another? And it's 2 v 2? What is 2HG?

April 28, 2013 5:08 a.m.

vic says... #6

Wait. 2 headed giant? Okay, got that part. But why does each of you have one guild plus an ally?

April 28, 2013 5:11 a.m.

RussischerZar says... #7

2HG is two-headed giant, a 2on2 format.

The pre-release rules are that you pick a guild from the ten ravnica guilds and get a guild booster, that only contains those guild's colors. You also get a 2nd guild booster, the "secret ally" (since you won't know before) which is from the opposing set (RTR <-> GTC) and shares one of your main guild's colors. Then you also get 4 DGM boosters and that's the sealed format for the pre-release.

April 28, 2013 5:18 a.m.

ShimmerVoid says... #8

Ral Zarek won me a couple of games in the prerelease and Ruric Thar is insanely strong as well. I was on the verge of beating someone but on both games he resolved a Ruric Thar and there was nothing I could do about it.

April 28, 2013 7:13 a.m.

Rewdog says... #9

Never underestimate any card's power. I went azorius and got simic as an ally, people laughed when my Jelenn Sphinx dropped onto the board. But in all seriousness, a 1/5 flying blocker that can ping for one every turn because of vigilance and acts as a Glorious Anthem when attacking, that is no joke, definitely kept me alive long enough and gave me extra power to win some games.

April 28, 2013 7:46 a.m.

kanofudo says... #10

I'll agree with the Jelenn Sphinx comments. I'd like to point out a few cards that weren't all that good. I found Awe of the Guilds to be VERY underwhelming and everytime i drew it i groaned internally because there was a better play for me. Was also kinda disappointed in my pulls, though I guess that's just luck, I got Melek, Izzet Paragon but had no overly good spells I wanted to copy. In the end it was fun, but would've liked to see a bit more.

(In case anyone was wondering I picked Izzet and ended up with Boros as ally)

April 28, 2013 8 a.m.

Ohthenoises says... #11

This was my prerelease deck. Went 4-2 on the night only losing to selesnya populate (The guy had a Voice of Resurgence which is op.) and Junk extort.

Prerelease 4/27/2013

April 28, 2013 9:35 a.m.

Zurnic says... #12

I played in the 2HG with plastic_avatar. We both went Orzhov, but he ended up playing a Jund deck with Ruric while I ended up playing straight Orzhov. I extorted for 3 almost every turn which meant we had a 6 point swing every turn. The mirror match was the worst for us and made the games go on forever, but we ended up placing first among six.

April 28, 2013 9:59 a.m.

drakanar says... #13

I easily had the worst pool I think I've ever seen... went golgari, allied with dimir...

My rares

Golgari Guildpack - Underworld Connections Dimir Guildpack - Whispering Madness Emmara Tandris Notion Thief Pontiff of Blight Catch / Release

Either way I could go (mill/ rock aggro) didn't have enough support with my commons/uncommons to support it...

April 28, 2013 10:31 a.m.

Phyrexia108 says... #14

I went 4-0-0 with my pre-release deck. I picked Orzhov and got Selesnya as my secret ally. If anyone wants to look: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/wbg-life-drain-1st-place-at-dgm-prerelease/

April 28, 2013 1:56 p.m.

Phyrexia108 says... #15

Oh, and for those people talking about how good Debt to the Deathless is I'm all for it. It saved me countless times.

April 28, 2013 1:58 p.m.

zbrah says... #16

What wont me games or atleast took a bunch of life out of my opponent was Armed / Dangerous

Heres my prerelease deck going 3-1 loosing to a selesyna deck who populated 4/4s

Lured!

April 28, 2013 4:53 p.m.

I went 4-1 with


deck chart Cult of the legion

SCORE: 0 | 2 COMMENTS | 185 VIEWS
Pre-release* vampirelazarus Playtest

Removal is key. Remove blockers, turn cards sideways until you win.

April 28, 2013 5:49 p.m.

squire1 says... #18

I got first place, no lost games with RUG junk. Just curved out with evolvers all day.

April 28, 2013 6:49 p.m.

CallMeCrazy says... #19

I went 4 colors and just threw a bunch of big creatures out and went 5-1

April 28, 2013 6:57 p.m.

Wike900 says... #20

Went 4-1 with Esper midrange, using absurb amounts of removal and a few bombs to win. Lost a match early to manascrew(probably kept a bad hand and a Skarrg Goliath bloodrushed.

April 28, 2013 11:23 p.m.

DarkSylux315 says... #21

you guys got to do 2HG? that sounds like a lot more fun than regular 1v1 which is what i had :/ Also, i got pretty unlucky with pulls, with the only worthwhile cards being Tajic, Blade of the Legion , Plasm Capture , Pontiff of Blight , and a foil Skylasher which really sucked because I picked Dimir w/ Izzet as my secret. Actually, a fair amount of my Dragon's Maze cards were pretty decent for Boros but I ran BUG to stay true to my guild. The only control I had was a single Putrefy . This was my first pre-release so I went 1-3 :(

April 29, 2013 10:04 a.m.

pookypuppy6 says... #22

I ended up with Prerelease DGM: Scavenge Rush and came 19th out of 90 or so in mine. Thrashing Mossdog was a standout card for me, it was a workhorse all day attacking and deterring aerial threats for splashable colours.

Selesnya WAS quite strong, Trostani's Summoner and Growing Ranks were each a pain in the ass. But it was Extort that killed me the most.

April 29, 2013 10:12 a.m.

I read this before I played at my prerelease and planned accordingly for the lategame. Played 5 gates, 3 of the green Gatekeeper that nets you 7 life, and a bunch of removal, with a little bit of Populate and Extort thrown in. The deck was amazing at stabilizing and clogging up the board until I could swing in for the win using Ready / Willing .

Some of the most fun I've ever had playing MtG.

April 29, 2013 4:28 p.m.

vic says... #24

Thanks RussischerZar. Good explanation. Sounds interesting.

April 30, 2013 12:19 a.m.

notamardybum says... #25

Reap Intellect is an amazing removal.

May 1, 2013 6:50 p.m.

I keep seeing people write "junk" is that just a repeated mispelling of "jund"?

May 4, 2013 5:44 p.m.

Ohthenoises says... #27

Junk is what people call W/B/G. IIRC it's called junk because the first people who made the decks a long time ago called it that because it was basically goodstuff.deck. filled with tons of junk.

May 4, 2013 5:49 p.m.

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